Mobile operating system

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A mobile operating system, also referred to as mobile OS, is an operating system that
operates a smartphone, tablet, PDA, or other mobile device.
Modern mobile operating systems combine the features of a personal computer operating
system with other features, including a touchscreen, cellular, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS mobile
navigation, camera, video camera, speech recognition, voice recorder, music player, near field
communication and infrared blaster.
Mobile devices with mobile communications capabilities (e.g. smartphones) contain two mobile
operating systems - the main user-facing software platform is supplemented by a second lowlevel proprietary real-time operating system which operates the radio and other hardware.
Research has shown that these low-level systems may contain a range of security vulnerabilities
permitting malicious base stations to gain high levels of control over the mobile device.[1]
Contents
[hide]

1 History

2 Current software platforms

o

2.1 Android

2.2 iOS

2.3 Windows Phone

2.4 Blackberry

2.5 Firefox OS

2.6 Sailfish OS

2.7 Tizen

2.8 Ubuntu Touch OS

3 Discontinued software platforms

o

3.1 Symbian

3.2 Windows Mobile

3.3 Palm OS

3.4 webOS

3.5 Maemo

3.6 MeeGo

3.7 LiMo

4 Customer satisfaction

5 Market share
o

5.1 Mobile internet traffic share

6 See also

7 References

8 External links

History[edit]
Mobile operating system milestones mirror the development of mobile phones and smartphones:

19731993 Mobile phones use embedded systems to control operation.

1995 The first smartphone, the IBM Simon, has a touchscreen, email and PDA features.

1996 Palm Pilot 1000 personal digital assistant is introduced with the Palm OS mobile
operating system.

1996 First Windows CE Handheld PC devices are introduced.

1999 Nokia S40 OS is officially introduced along with the Nokia 7110

2000 Symbian becomes the first modern mobile OS on a smartphone with the launch of
the Ericsson R380.

2001 The Kyocera 6035 is the first smartphone with Palm OS.

2002 Microsoft's first Windows CE (Pocket PC) smartphones are introduced.

2002 BlackBerry releases its first smartphone.

2005 Nokia introduces Maemo OS on the first internet tablet N770.

2007 Apple iPhone with iOS is introduced as an iPhone, "mobile phone" and "internet
communicator."[2]

2007 Open Handset Alliance (OHA) formed

by Google, HTC, Sony, Dell, Intel, Motorola, Samsung, LG, etc.[3]

2008 OHA releases Android(Based on Linux Kernel) 1.0 with the HTC Dream (T-Mobile
G1) as the first Android phone.

2009 Palm introduces webOS with the Palm Pre. By 2012 webOS devices were no
longer sold.
2009 Samsung announces the Bada OS with the introduction of the Samsung S8500.

2010 Windows Phone OS phones are released but are not compatible with the
previous Windows Mobile OS.

2011 MeeGo the first mobile Linux, combining Maemo and Moblin, is introduced with
the Nokia N9, a collaboration of Nokia, Intel and Linux Foundation

In September 2011 Samsung, Intel and the Linux Foundation announced that their efforts
will shift from Bada, MeeGo to Tizen during 2011 and 2012.

In October 2011 the Mer project was announced, centered around an ultra-portable Linux
+ HTML5/QML/JavaScript Core for building products with, derived from the MeeGo
codebase.

2012 Mozilla announced in July 2012 that the project previously known as "Boot to
Gecko" was now Firefox OS and had several handset OEMs on board.

2013 Canonical announced Ubuntu Touch, a version of the Linux distribution expressly
designed for smartphones. The OS is built on the Android Linux kernel, using Android
drivers, but does not use any of the Java-like code of Android. [4]

2013 BlackBerry released their new operating system for smartphones and
tablets, BlackBerry 10.

2013 Google release latest version of Android Kitkat.

2014 Microsoft release Windows Phone 8.1 in February 2014.

2014 Apple release iOS 8 in September 2014.

2014 BlackBerry release BlackBerry 10.3 in September 2014.

2014 Google release Android Lollipop in November 2014.

Current software platforms[edit]

See also: Comparison of smartphones, List of Firefox OS devices, List of iOS devices and List of
Windows Phone devices

Android[edit]
See: Android (operating system)
Android (based on the Linux Kernel) is from Google Inc..[5] It has the largest installed base
worldwide on smartphones. Most of Android is free and open source, [6] but a large amount of
software on Android devices (such as Play Store, Google Search, Google Play Services, Google
Music, and so on) are proprietary ,licensed proprietary, closed source applications and contract
(join the Open Handset Alliance) not to manufacture cellulars that replace Google applications or
services .[7]

Android's releases prior to 2.0 (1.0, 1.5, 1.6) were used exclusively on mobile phones. Android
2.x releases were mostly used for mobile phones but also some tablets. Android 3.0 was a tabletoriented release and does not officially run on mobile phones. The current Android version is 5.0.
Android's releases are named after sweets or dessert items:

Cupcake (1.5)

Donut (1.6)

Eclair (2.0)

Frozen Yogurt ("Froyo") (2.2)

Ginger Bread (2.3)

Honeycomb (3.0)

Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0)

Jelly Bean (4.1), (4.2), (4.3)

Kit Kat (4.4)

Lollipop (5.0)

Most major mobile service providers carry an Android device. Since HTC Dream was introduced,
there has been an explosion in the number of devices that carry Android OS. From second
quarter of 2009 to the second quarter of 2010, Android's worldwide market share rose from 1.8%
to 17.2%. On November 15, 2011, Android reached 52.5% of the global smartphone market
share.[8] On September 2014 Android's global market share rose to 85%.[9]

iOS[edit]
iOS is from Apple Inc.[5] It has second largest installed base worldwide on smartphones behind
Android. It is closed source and proprietary and built on open sourceDarwin core OS. The
Apple iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad and second-generation Apple TV all use an operating system
called iOS, which is derived from Mac OS X.
Native third party applications were not officially supported until the release of iOS 2.0 on July 11,
2008. Before this, "jailbreaking" allowed third party applications to be installed, and this method is
still available.
Currently all iOS devices are developed by Apple and manufactured by Foxconn or another of
Apple's partners.
As of September 2014, iOS global market share was 11%. [9]

Windows Phone[edit]
Windows Phone is from Microsoft. It is closed source and proprietary. It has third largest installed
base on smartphones behind Android and iOS.
On February 15, 2010, Microsoft unveiled its next-generation mobile OS, Windows Phone. The
new mobile OS includes a completely new over-hauled UI inspired by Microsoft's "Metro Design
Language". It includes full integration of Microsoft services such as OneDrive and Office, Xbox
Music, Xbox Video, Xbox Live games andBing, but also integrates with many other non-Microsoft
services such as Facebook and Google accounts. Windows Phone devices are made primarily
by Nokia, along with HTC, Samsung.

As of September 2014, Windows Phone market share was 3%. [9]

Blackberry[edit]
BlackBerry 10 (based on the QNX OS) is from BlackBerry. As a smart phone OS, it is closed
source and proprietary.
It is used mostly by Government employees. BlackBerry 10 is the next generation platform for
BlackBerry smartphones and tablets. All phones and tablets are manufactured by Blackberry
itself.
Once one of the dominant platforms in the world, it's global market share has been reduced to
less than 1% in late 2014.[9]

Firefox OS[edit]
Firefox OS[10] is from Mozilla. It is open source and uses Mozilla Public License.
According to Ars Technica, "Mozilla says that B2G is motivated by a desire to demonstrate that
the standards-based open Web has the potential to be a competitive alternative to the existing
single-vendor application development stacks offered by the dominant mobile operating
systems."[11]

Sailfish OS[edit]
Sailfish OS is from Jolla. It is partly open source and adopts GPL (core and middleware),
however the user interface is closed source.
After Nokia failed in 2011 with the MeeGo project most of the MeeGo team have left Nokia, and
established Jolla as a company to use MeeGo and MER business opportunities. In 2012 Linux
Sailfish OS based on MeeGo and using MER core distribution has been launched for public use.
The first device, Jolla (mobile phone) was unveiled on 20 May 2013.

Tizen[edit]
Tizen is hosted by the Linux Foundation and support from the Tizen Association, guided by a
Technical Steering Group composed of Intel and Samsung.
Tizen is an operating system for devices including smartphones, tablets, in-vehicle infotainment
(IVI) devices, and smart TVs. It is an open source system that aims to offer a consistent user
experience across devices. Tizen's main components are the Linux kernel and the WebKit
runtime. According to Intel, Tizen combines the best of LiMo and MeeGo." HTML5apps are
emphasized, with MeeGo encouraging its members to transition to Tizen, stating that the "future
belongs to HTML5-based applications, outside of a relatively small percentage of apps, and we
are firmly convinced that our investment needs to shift toward HTML5." Tizen will be targeted at
a variety of platforms such as handsets, touch pc, smart TVs and in-vehicle entertainment. [12][13]
On May 17, 2013, Tizen released version 2.1, code-named Nectarine.[14]